In November last year a 19-year-old named Jesse made a surprising discovery while playing Skyrim. Using the console commands (No-clip) he traveled to the most south-eastern area of the game known as Stendarr’s Beacon and went beyond the game’s boundaries down a path between two mountains. What he found was low detail versions of the Morrowind and Cyrodiil environments.

Nobody knew why the locations had been included in the game, with speculation that Bethesda had something big planned as part of a future update for Skyrim. Now we know why they are there as Bethesda has explained all.

The explanation comes from Todd Howard, designer and producer at Bethesda. The reason both Morrowind and Cyrodiil exist in Skyrim is purely for background detail. They solved the problem of what a player can see when they climb to the top of a mountain and look to the horizon. The landscapes from previous games made for perfect background detail and didn’t require much work to place low detail versions of their landmass around the core Skyrim environment.

However, Bethesda hasn’t ruled out using those areas in future. Although Howard certainly didn’t confirm anything, there’s always a chance we may get a surprise expansion pack for the game that opens up those locations.

Even if Bethesda don’t do it officially, the modding community may take up the challenge and start populating the landscape for them. The newly released Creation Kit certainly puts the tools out there for such mods to happen.